


Rescue from Without

by aderyn



Series: Compounds or Stars [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, Gen, heroes do exist, many (happy) returns, post-Reichenbach/return, what happens when you don't know what will happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:25:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Maybe Sherlock appears, keyless, at Baker Street with a book, a gun, a torch and an olive branch.”</p><p>“Maybe he burns up on re-entry, or shatters on impact, and John builds him up out of fragments and ash--after all, he’s only returning the favor.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue from Without

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a chapter sub-heading from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces: "The hero might have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without." 
> 
> A 221B to go with “Uncommon Knowledge” and “Uncommon Affection.” I’d like this to be longer, but it isn’t. I apologize for being pants with plot. (I am).

  __

_"The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world." --Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces_

**__**

 

Maybe Sherlock appears, keyless, at Baker Street with a book, a gun, a torch and an olive branch.  No, a white dove and a handkerchief, or the last lily John left at his grave. 

And maybe John, who can’t overcome his instinct for revival, strikes him right in the center of his chest.

Or maybe John finds him, blue-lipped, on his doorstep.  And John doesn’t know what he’s been breathing, and while he waits for him to wake his anger turns to smoke.

Maybe he burns up on re-entry, or shatters on impact, and John builds him up out of fragments and ash--after all, he’s only returning the favor.

***

Maybe, at the threshold of the Underworld, Molly pulls him back as she once pushed him over, and she thinks, so oddly, it _is_ like a birth.

Maybe he materializes at a murder as if out of the earth, and Lestrade says _fuck, you’re standing on my body._ And John laughs beside him and he’s halfway home.

Maybe, done killing, he picks his way back through minefield and marsh. And he says, _I’ve disappointed you,_ and John tells him, _no_.

***

Maybe the city claps them back together so hard that it can’t be a metaphor: Maybe there’s a headwind when he lands. Maybe they grow handcuffs and heavy bands.  
  
  
  
 __

**Author's Note:**

> “There's one thing I'll tell you friend  
> All of our trials gonna come to an end  
> And you and I, we're gonna fall  
> Like we never have stood on this little earth at all”--Grant Lee Phillips, "The Hook"


End file.
